the president traveled to pennsylvania to visit a small business today to talk about the fiscal cliff. unfortunately, it's the president and members of his own party who were proposing that we let many small businesses, as in hundreds of thousands of them, go over the fiscal cliff. simply put, that's why we don't have an agreement as yet. they said yesterday this is not a game. i used to be a small business owner. small business owners are regular men and women from all backgrounds who, in today's economy, are facing challenges on a daily basis. and the president's tax increase would be another crippling blow for them while doing little to nothing to solve the bigger problem here, which is our national deficit and our national this debt doesn't exist because we don't tax small businesses enough. it exists because washington continues to spend too much. raising taxes on small businesses instead of taking a balanced approach that also cuts spending is wrong. it's only going to make it harder for our economy to grow. and if our economy doesn't grow, americans don't get new jobs. and the